About Me

I'm Jason and I was born and raised in Manila. I started writing professionally at age 19, when my byline first appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I then became one of its student correspondents, and my assignments included being a gasoline boy and a T.G.I. Friday's waiter for a day.
At present, I'm an Intranet content manager and a contributing lifestyle journalist.
My work has also appeared in SilkWinds (Singapore), Aspire (Hong Kong), and www.interaksyon.com.
I mainly blog about food, movies, and occasionally, current events.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I came across one of Antipinoy's online vitriol. (I don't follow its website and social media accounts; one of my Twitter buddies unfortunately re-tweeted its reaction to the video of UP economics professor Winnie Monsod's last lecture for the school year.)

Here's the video of Mrs. Monsod. I was so stunned by her speech that I had to reassess my short-term goals and make them less selfish—main reason why I felt that I had to write about this.

Here is AntiPinoy's reaction. I am not providing links because as one of my other Twitter buds, @elvinelvinelvinelvin, said, "Hits-whoring. Again. Obviously."

Who presumes to be an authority on who’s led an “honourable” or less-than-”honourable” life? Apparently esteemed “economics” professor Winnie Monsod thinks she is one such authority. In her recent “gone-viral” video, Monsod admonishes people who after being educated in the University of the Philippines (UP) — country’s premier state university — had opted to seek their fortunes overseas.

A couple of things:

(1) Why only students of UP?

Shouldn’t she be including the millions of Filipinos who were educated by Filipino taxpayers through the rest of the public education system?

Duh, because the lecture was originally (because it has since been re-posted online) for her class comprised of UP students.

And;

(2) Why only people who go abroad?

Last I heard the number of Filipinos who live in the islands overwhelmingly and utterly dwarfs the number of people who are working and residing abroad...

We pester the elite of our society with calls for acts of heroism when the burden of extra hard work in reality falls on the shoulders of the poor masses.

(First: What 'extra' hard work? Where is this 'extra' hard work coming from? I hope your answer is not the elite because a) that then opens a can of flawed arguments from the author; and b) that is one of the reasons why Mrs. Monsod stressed on honor and integrity from one particular category of elites: UP students—in her lecture. )

Again, the lecture is for UP students. Mrs. Monsod specifically called out on expatriates with state-funded education, adding that these alumni would never be able to pay back what the government had invested in them—despite monetary contributions to their respective university associations—unless they exhaust their mental and manual energies in the Philippines.

Of course, this is debatable: BETWEEN MRS. MONSOD AND FILIPINO EXPATS WITH STATE-FUNDED EDUCATION.

Also, calling on the "elite of our society" to act heroically does not imply a call for the "poor masses" to stop working, heroically or otherwise. Mrs. Monsod's lecture never did.

It takes real insight to spot these cling-on bits of reality hiding underneath our glossy fur and a lot of hard work to pick them off our thin hides.

Deal with it.

He is clearly not a writer.

(I remember another AntiPinoy article, whichI cited in this blog entry [middle part], for its horrible argument. It turned out it was written by the same person as the one written about in this entry.)